Kuhn’s “The Copernican Revolution” and “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” are both excellent. The first is a very good history of astronomy, the second is a mix of history and Kuhn’s views on the philosophy of science. Kuhn, is, as far as I can tell, deeply wrong about the nature of science, but he makes good points and where he is wrong he’s wrong for interesting reasons. The Copernican Revolution does a very good job helping one understand just how complicated the history of astronomy is and how often subtle premises can impact scientific investigation even when (or possibly especially when) the premises are not explicitly stated. Alan Hirschfeld’s “Parallax:The Race to Measure the Cosmos” is also an excellent book within similar lines.
Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” is still very readable and shows an example of really good thinking even under incomplete data.
I’m trying to get through Priestley’s “The History and Present State of Electricity” which is fascinating and gives good thoughts about how to approach thinking (it has gotten I think multiple quotes in the rationality quotes threads here), but the archaic style and grammar makes it sometimes difficult to read.
“Proofs and Refutations” by Lakatos is an excellent and enjoyable look at both the psychology and philosophy behind discovering mathematical proofs.
Kuhn, is, as far as I can tell, deeply wrong about the nature of science
Expand? I read Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” right after reading Popper, and the contrast was striking. Popper tries to define from first principles how science should be done, and fails; Kuhn examines how good science is done in the real world, and succeeds. His concept of “normal science”—which Ken Binmore expressed as something like “small problems conclusively solved, building on one another”—helps me differentiate between good and bad science more reliably than Popper’s criterion of falsifiability. You could say I’m addicted to incremental advances the same way as others are addicted to paradigm shifts.
My views on Kuhn are complicated. I agree with most of what you have to say, but roughly speaking I consider Kuhn to be wrong on three accounts:
1) He underestimates the level within people in different paradigms can talk to each other. For example, in Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he tried to argue at one point that someone in a Newtonian paradigm can’t really talk to someone in a relativistic paradigm. 2) He underestimates the degree to which people can during crisis choose one paradigm or another based on objective considerations (such as simplicity, ability to account for evidence, degree of consistency with other stable paradigms in related fields, etc.) 3) He underestimates the degree to which genuine progress can occur. (In the postscript to the later editions of Structure he argues that he’s been misinterpreted and that he believes in some limited forms of scientific progress. But I think even the level given in that postscript is an underestimate). He especially fails to acknowledge that in the long-arc eventually new paradigms become finer approximations for predicting actual behavior of reality.
To make a linebreak appear without having to skip a line, put a double-space and the end of the line. (I assume that’s what you wanted to do with the numbers.)
What counts as more “simple” than something else is usually defined by the paradigm your working within (and so isn’t really objective). For instance, Cartesian physics could be considered more simple than Newtonian physics, because it posits less kinds of forces (only contact forces, no forces that act at a distance).
On the other points I agree. All of Kuhn’s main arguments (like Feyerabend’s) would be sound if they weren’t overstated.
He’s probably thinking of Paul Feyerabend; the best example for Feyerabend is probably his studies of Galileo—demonstrating that Galileo’s observations did not prove his theories, his theories made poorer predictions than geocentrism, replication of his results often failed, and so on, and that Galileo succeeded more on account of non-empirical reasons such as theoretical elegance and social connections than on the then-merits of his theory.
Replying to myself to keep further recommendations well-organized:
Richard Wiseman’s “59 Seconds” is an examination of many pop-psych claims and what research actually says. It also includes a lot of helpful tricks and techniques that can be performed in less than a minute (hence the title). Hmm, it might make sense to also mention this in the thread on short rationality techniques...
Kuhn’s “The Copernican Revolution” and “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” are both excellent. The first is a very good history of astronomy, the second is a mix of history and Kuhn’s views on the philosophy of science. Kuhn, is, as far as I can tell, deeply wrong about the nature of science, but he makes good points and where he is wrong he’s wrong for interesting reasons. The Copernican Revolution does a very good job helping one understand just how complicated the history of astronomy is and how often subtle premises can impact scientific investigation even when (or possibly especially when) the premises are not explicitly stated. Alan Hirschfeld’s “Parallax:The Race to Measure the Cosmos” is also an excellent book within similar lines.
Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” is still very readable and shows an example of really good thinking even under incomplete data.
I’m trying to get through Priestley’s “The History and Present State of Electricity” which is fascinating and gives good thoughts about how to approach thinking (it has gotten I think multiple quotes in the rationality quotes threads here), but the archaic style and grammar makes it sometimes difficult to read.
“Proofs and Refutations” by Lakatos is an excellent and enjoyable look at both the psychology and philosophy behind discovering mathematical proofs.
Expand? I read Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” right after reading Popper, and the contrast was striking. Popper tries to define from first principles how science should be done, and fails; Kuhn examines how good science is done in the real world, and succeeds. His concept of “normal science”—which Ken Binmore expressed as something like “small problems conclusively solved, building on one another”—helps me differentiate between good and bad science more reliably than Popper’s criterion of falsifiability. You could say I’m addicted to incremental advances the same way as others are addicted to paradigm shifts.
My views on Kuhn are complicated. I agree with most of what you have to say, but roughly speaking I consider Kuhn to be wrong on three accounts:
1) He underestimates the level within people in different paradigms can talk to each other. For example, in Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he tried to argue at one point that someone in a Newtonian paradigm can’t really talk to someone in a relativistic paradigm.
2) He underestimates the degree to which people can during crisis choose one paradigm or another based on objective considerations (such as simplicity, ability to account for evidence, degree of consistency with other stable paradigms in related fields, etc.)
3) He underestimates the degree to which genuine progress can occur. (In the postscript to the later editions of Structure he argues that he’s been misinterpreted and that he believes in some limited forms of scientific progress. But I think even the level given in that postscript is an underestimate). He especially fails to acknowledge that in the long-arc eventually new paradigms become finer approximations for predicting actual behavior of reality.
To make a linebreak appear without having to skip a line, put a double-space and the end of the line. (I assume that’s what you wanted to do with the numbers.)
Yes, thank you.
What counts as more “simple” than something else is usually defined by the paradigm your working within (and so isn’t really objective). For instance, Cartesian physics could be considered more simple than Newtonian physics, because it posits less kinds of forces (only contact forces, no forces that act at a distance).
On the other points I agree. All of Kuhn’s main arguments (like Feyerabend’s) would be sound if they weren’t overstated.
He’s probably thinking of Paul Feyerabend; the best example for Feyerabend is probably his studies of Galileo—demonstrating that Galileo’s observations did not prove his theories, his theories made poorer predictions than geocentrism, replication of his results often failed, and so on, and that Galileo succeeded more on account of non-empirical reasons such as theoretical elegance and social connections than on the then-merits of his theory.
Replying to myself to keep further recommendations well-organized:
Richard Wiseman’s “59 Seconds” is an examination of many pop-psych claims and what research actually says. It also includes a lot of helpful tricks and techniques that can be performed in less than a minute (hence the title). Hmm, it might make sense to also mention this in the thread on short rationality techniques...
Thankyou, I’ll take a look at that one.